Wing Drones Take to the Sky for Deliveries in Urban Centers

As it did with its self-driving taxi service Waymo, Alphabet Inc. is hoping to get ahead of the competition in the emerging drone delivery service. Alphabet’s drone division, Wing, is perfecting a delivery system that will work in the urban environment.

Most drone delivery services that are in operation have stuck to rural areas where navigation and logistics is not complicated by tall buildings and crowed city centers.

Wing recently announced it will create fully autonomous citywide delivery networks, patterned after networks used by last-mile delivery vans. The company plans for a drone to pick up orders, drop them off and then charge themselves at a charging pad within the network. The drones would travel in patterns that mirror consumer demand. During the day, the drone may not even return to its home base.

“Up to this point, the industry has been fixated on drones themselves— designing, testing, and iterating on aircraft, rather than finding the best way to harness an entire fleet for efficient delivery,” said Wing CEO Adam Woodward on the company’s website. “Wing’s approach to delivery is different. We see drone delivery at scale looking more like an efficient data network than a traditional transportation system.”

The Wing Delivery Network utilizes curbside delivery and pick-up areas at retail stores and restaurants that became ubiquitous during the pandemic. Once a drone has delivered a package it may pick up a nearby package at another store and deliver it or just park itself at a nearby network hub of drone pads awaiting its next delivery.

The process involves the drone communicating with a new piece of hardware called the Autoloader. Similar to warehouses that have streamlined operations with automated sortation and packing stations, the technology allows store workers to prepare orders for delivery simply by loading a package into the autoloader which then attaches to the drone.

Once Wing confirms a package is in the Autoloader, a drone is on its way to pick up and deliver it. For participating retailers, the new tech aims to make drone delivery as simple as working with platforms like Uber or DoorDash.

“Drones within the Wing Delivery Network can pick up, drop off, travel, and charge in whatever pattern makes the most sense for the entire system,” Woodward said. “For example, with multiple charging spots, they’ll have the flexibility to meet peaks in consumer demand across entire cities. Pad locations can be added simply, with the aircraft themselves used as the surveying tools to update and expand the network.”

In high density urban centers which may not have pick-up areas in parking lots, Wing has made use of rooftops to conduct its service. Currently Wing is operating in cities such as DallasFort Worth, Brisbane and Canberra, Australia, Geneva, Switzerland and Helsinki, Finland.

Within two years, Woodward predicts Wing will handle millions of small package deliveries within urban areas across the world for a fraction of the cost of ground transport.